From: Roger-AT-pseud.pseud
Subject: M-INTRO: Reading Suggestions
Date: Sat, 25 Jan 1997 01:04:01 GMT


About a month ago, I asked the following question on this list:

>I do not see how capitalism can
>be regarded as illegitimate if all capitalists did was to offer workers an
>opportunity they would not have otherwise had.  It seems like it would have
>to be shown that capitalists hindered workers' other options somehow.  Or
>does the illegitimacy of capitalism depend on what I would call "negative
>externalities across time," in that, even if, at capitalism's outset,
>workers had all their alternatives to working for capitalists intact but
>chose to work for capitalists because it was their best opportunity, their
>very choosing to work for capitalists destroyed these other alternatives for
>future workers?


I got sidetracked, and only today read any of the responses.  Among other
responses to my question, Hugh wrote, as follows:

>There are one or two ways of seeing things here that are begging the >question.

>For instance, seeing humanity as either capitalists or workers and nothing
>else, predisposes an observer to discount other options.

>The "opportunity" Roger mentions the capitalists offering the workers is
>presumably that of taking employment, earning a wage and staying alive. >But it took thousands of years of class society developing through slavery >and feudalism before the breadwinning activities of the primary producers >were at the mercy of capitalists. Before this people were usually born into a
>direct and unquestioned relationship of participation in the means of
>production -- as serfs, subsistence farming members of a despotic >community or whatever. They were part of the means of production. Before >capitalism could take over, these ties had to be destroyed and people had >to be alienated from the means of production so they could confront them >as "free" agents, alienated from any immediate relationship with the means >of production. To do this required an enormous collective effort on the part
>of the bourgeoisie and its allies, usually the absolute monarchs (allied
>with the bourgeoisie against the nobility). Marx details this process in
>Capital with plenty of references to the gory legislation against
>vagabondage etc that was used to "encourage" the poor to work for
>starvation wages.

Mo suggested that chapter 23 in "Capital" addresses the question of the
illegitimate origins of capitalism.  In lieu of asking this to be discussed
further on this list, I would like suggestions of reading material that
would give historical support to the idea that it was illegitimate in the
first place that those who chose to work for capitalists had no better
alternatives.


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